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This chapter reiterates what is at stake by clarifying that the question of the ‘paradigm’ or of the theoretical orientation is something which is far from being of merely theoretical or ‘merely academic’ consequence. It argues that post-Marxist political theory in particular must now attend to the challenge and criticisms laid down by deconstruction and cultural studies if it is not, paradoxically, to disengage from the possibility of intervening politically in anything like the way that was its own initial purpose. The chapter takes issue with the agenda proposed by the most recent work of...

This chapter reiterates what is at stake by clarifying that the question of the ‘paradigm’ or of the theoretical orientation is something which is far from being of merely theoretical or ‘merely academic’ consequence. It argues that post-Marxist political theory in particular must now attend to the challenge and criticisms laid down by deconstruction and cultural studies if it is not, paradoxically, to disengage from the possibility of intervening politically in anything like the way that was its own initial purpose. The chapter takes issue with the agenda proposed by the most recent work of Laclau, as well as with the arguably rudderless drift of cultural studies away from engaging with political responsibility, proposing a rearticulation with the shared and constitutive problematic of both and a reorientation with the demands of any project of responsible intervention.